The present invention relates to an electrophotographic image recorder and, more particularly, to a device incorporated in such an image recorder for collecting a waste toner and constructed independently of a cleaning device.
An electrophotographic copier, facsimile transceiver, laser printer or similar electrophotographic image recorder has an optical writing device for electrostatically forming a latent image on a photoconductive element, and a developing device for developing the latent image by a toner or developer. The resulted toner image is transferred to a recording medium in the form of a paper sheet by an image transferring device. Thereafter, the toner image on the sheet is fixed by a fixing device. After the image transfer, a cleaning device implemented as a blade removes toner particles, paper dust and so on remaining on the photoconductive element. The toner so removed from the photoconductive element, i.e., waste toner is collected in a receptacle together with the paper dust.
It has been customary to construct the above-mentioned receptacle integrally with the cleaning device. Such a configuration has a problem that when the receptacle is filled with the waste toner, not only the receptacle but also the cleaning device has to be bodily removed from the body of the recorder to discard the waste toner. Since the receptacle filled with the waste toner is heavy, removing it together with the cleaning device is troublesome. Moreover, it is likely that the waste toner is scattered around or dropped in the recorder during the removing operation, smearing the interior of the recorder.